Monthly Archives: November 2025

Rewinding time with a 2HB

Scheduled Maintenance Notice: Tuesday, November 11, 2025

The SWLing Post will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, November 11, 2025, beginning around 10:00 AM EST (15:00 UTC).

Note that, during this time, the site will be temporarily offline (in maintenance mode) while we perform maintenance on the server and database. This downtime will help ensure the site continues running smoothly and securely.

We expect the SWLing Post to be unavailable for a few hours, but it should be back online later in the day.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

— Thomas and the SWLing Post team

Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Reports and Recordings of CGTN (November 9, 2025)

Radiofax

Typhoon Fung Wong via Japan Meteorological Agency radiofax

November 6, 2025:

November 8, 2025:

November 9, 2025:

Problems And Temporary Changes At The Shortwave Transmitter Park Near Brasilia

2 Replies

The 11780khz antenna beaming at 312 degrees

(compiled, posted and edited by Paul Walker, KSKO-FM McGrath Alaska Program Director and Avid SWL’er)

UPDATE: On November 13th, I was told that 11780khz is operating with 50,000 watts transmitter power output instead of it’s usual 100,000 Watts. It was also shared with me that new tubes are in the process of being ordered and they hope to be back to normal about in about a week from the date of this update. This story was originally published November 9th.

Over the last few years, many of us who enjoy listening to Radio Nacional da Amazônia have noticed the 11780 kHz signal coming and going. It’s had several breakdowns, mostly because the transmitter is about 50 years old now. They’ve been running it at 100 kW instead of the full 250 kW, but even then, it’s been showing its age.

The weekend of November 8th, 11780 kHz was off again. But this time, 6180 kHz was sounding unusually good up here in Alaska — stronger and clearer than I’ve heard it in a while. That one usually beams at 239 degrees toward South America, so it really caught my attention.

Curious about what was going on, I reached out to Manoel Caetano, Radio Engineering Manager at Empresa Brasil de Comunicação, which runs Radio Nacional. Here’s what he told me:

“We had a problem with the logic unit of the 11780 transmitter, but that’s been resolved. However, we’re still having issues with the 4CX5000 tubes, so 11780 is running at reduced power until we get replacements. Also, 6180 kHz has been switched to the 11780 kHz 312° antenna because of the COP30 event taking place in Belém, Brazil.”

Always interesting to get a peek behind the curtain like that. It’s good to know the folks at EBC are keeping these classic shortwave services going, even if it means juggling transmitters and antennas from time to time. Thank you to Manoel for answering my questions and providing the picture.

Hearing Alaska and Hawaii on shortwave

1 Reply

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dan Greenall, who shares the following guest post:

Hearing Alaska and Hawaii on shortwave

by Dan Greenall

Alaska

Since 1983, the New Life Station, KNLS, has been broadcasting from Anchor Point, Alaska. Beamed primarily to Asia, their signals were not received as well in parts of North America as they might have been otherwise. From my location in southern Ontario, Canada, I was able to make this recording of their interval signal (“Chariots of Fire”) on 7355 kHz in 1987 around 1300 UTC with announcements in a Chinese dialect.

The station is still on the air in 2025. I made this recording on October 23 around 1200 hours UTC, in which you can hear their current interval signal prior to sign on in English. Reception was made on 7355 kHz using a remote KiwiSDR in northern Japan.

You can check out other opportunities to log KNLS on websites such as Shortwave.Live

Hawaii

Back in the 1950s, the Voice of America had a transmitter in Honolulu, but that was long before my introduction to shortwave. In 1993, World Harvest Radio station KWHR began broadcasting from Naalehu, near the southern tip of the big island of Hawaii. This one was widely heard by DXer’s and I still have a recording made of their announcement from November 10, 1996 on 9930 kHz.

Unfortunately, the station went officially off the air in 2009, so now the only way to hear Hawaii on shortwave is the NIST station WWVH at Kekaha on the island of Kauai. You can hear them on 2.5, 5, 10, or 15 MHz whenever propagation conditions are favorable to your listening post, assuming other stations like WWV and BPM are not overpowering them.

Here is a link to a few WWVH recordings. The first, from 1971, was made in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, when they were still called the National Bureau of Standards and were using the term “Greenwich Mean Time.”

The second one was made on December 1, 2024 using a remote SDR near Honolulu.

Finally, if you can copy CW (morse code) and listen carefully, there is a brief 8 second clip of WWVH sending their call letters twice. It is from pre-1971 when the station was located on the island of Maui. Aloha!

Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Report and Recording of Voice of Vietnam (November 4 & 5, 2025)

CC Buds Solo: Two years into the mission . . .

8 Replies

By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

Okay, okay, I can almost predict what you will be thinking: it’s not the most expensive piece of gear in your listening kit. But for me, headphones or earbuds that pipe the audio from my SW receiver or scanner directly into my ears is one of my most valued pieces of equipment.

Why? First, because I have a hearing deficit that headphones or earbuds help to overcome. Second, to preserve domestic tranquility, so my wife doesn’t have to endure the squeaks, squawks, and static crashes that are often part of the listening experience. (We Armchair Adventurers have to keep our priorities straight.) And third, to help me concentrate on teasing out faint signals.

So I am a fan of headphones and earbuds, but I have had a difficult relationship with them because the wires break. That’s right; until recently, all of the headphones or earbuds that I employed eventually failed because the wire/cable connecting the headphones or earbuds to the radio failed, either losing any signal entirely or becoming intermittent.

Two years ago, the folks at CCrane teased me with a marketing email that offered CC Buds Solo In-Ear Single Earbud with a cable that was Kevlar reinforced for “maximum durability.” Intrigued, I purchased the “buy two, get one free” deal because I knew, just knew, Kevlar-reinforced or not, the cable would eventually fail.

Well, guess what? The cable did not fail, not even a little bit, despite my treating it badly. (Once, while walking, the cable caught on a doorknob, yanking the earbud out of my ear and a small digital recorder out of my pocket. And that’s not the only time I have inadvertently done my best to render it inoperable.) Two years into the mission, I am still using the original CCrane solo earbud that I first unpacked. The second one is deployed upstairs for my horizontal DXing exploits in the middle of the night, and the third I gave to a friend. CCrane says the audio is “tuned for superior voice quality,” which works just fine for my purposes.

So the upshot, if you hadn’t guessed, is that I can heartily recommend the CCrane Solo Earbud. If you consult the original post, found here — https://swling.com/blog/2023/12/checking-out-ccranes-solo-earbud/ — you can discover some additional details and some of the reasons why I find listening with one earbud to be an advantage.